Floridas Pink Palace Was Built on a Tragic Love Story and Some Say the Lovers Never Left

If walls could talk, the Don CeSar would have an enormous story to tell you.

On the powdery shores of Florida’s Gulf, there’s a place where coral towers rise over the sea like a happy fortress—formidable, ethereal, pink.

Welcome to The Don CeSar. Many know it as the most glamorous oceanfront hotel on St. Pete Beach, affectionately called the “Pink Palace”—and yes, it is all that, with a Historic Hotels of America Awards of Excellence under its belt, an enviable location near the world-class Dali Museum, plus a relaxing spa and luxury service to go with it. But few know that nearly 100 years ago, it was built on heartbreak and—depending on what you believe—hauntings.

These whisperings are how I find myself in the elegant lobby for a tour. (With a historian on property, who wouldn’t?) The next part makes me shiver, despite just exiting the Florida sun.

Where I’m standing, the hotel’s owner dropped dead in 1940. Cause of death? A heart attack, though anyone who knew him could have said it was the old wounds of a long-ago broken heart.

We go back to 1890s London to understand.

The story goes: Thomas Rowe and Lucinda de Guzman weren’t supposed to be together. He was from a modest family; she from a wealthy one. They’d fallen in love after he saw her perform in the opera Maritana, in which hero, Don César escapes death and is reunited with his love. Inspired, Thomas and Lucinda met in secret by a courtyard fountain, dreaming of the future. When they planned to elope, her parents discovered the plot and hid her away.

At this point, I lean in. I’m wishing I’d brought popcorn. I want more Gilded Age Romeo and Juliet.

Heartbroken, Thomas moved to America but continued to write to Lucinda. Like something out of The Notebook (minus the joyful reunion), all his letters were returned unopened, with Lucinda’s obituary enclosed and a single note from her deathbed:

“We found each other before, and we will do so again. This life is only an intermediate…Time is infinite. I will wait for you by our fountain to share our timeless love.”

So he did what any man would do: built a hotel for her. In the lobby stood a fountain built as a tribute to Lucinda, and the opera characters’ names, Don CeSar and Maritana, adorned the hotel and its dining room. (Though the fountain is long gone, the restaurant is still Maritana. Later that night over champagne and seafood, I’ll find it has staying power; where, among white pillars, even the kids menu features a filet mignon.

For Thomas, there was new life to be found in the hotel. It was the picture of the Jazz Age when it opened in 1928, men on the beach in white flannel trousers and sports jackets, women in pastel dresses and wide-brimmed hats—like something out of one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels. And in fact, Fitzgerald did stay here. It celebrated years of success in that Roaring 20s heyday, drawing celebrities, the Yankees for spring training, and, I learned when we reached the Grand Ballroom, socialites who danced the night away at galas.

Then the tragedy struck. In 1940, Thomas was walking the grounds of his hotel, taking stock for the upcoming season. By the time he reached the lobby, he was dead—right next to the fountain he’d built for Lucinda.

It’s a story that’s captured the imagination of local ghost tour operators, who say there have been reports of a man in a white suit roaming the halls looking for his lost love, of two lovers strolling the beach under the moonlight. In one particularly spooky Reddit story, a guest swears that a sad woman hovered over him. But that’s all hearsay.

Julian Vazquez, Historian and Lead Concierge at The Don CeSar, can’t speak to the ghosts—no one on the property can say officially. But he’s certain of this: In the wake of Thomas’s death, drama ensued. The property fell to his estranged wife, who essentially ran it into the ground and sold it to the Army.

The Don was a shell of its former self by 1942, barebones and now an Army hospital, with operating rooms on the eighth floor. If there’s any stock in the ghost stories, then there are also battle-weary WWII patients roaming the halls.

The military stayed for years, but when they vacated in 1969, the Don fell into disrepair, all cracked paint, rats, the picture of abandonment, decay—a veritable haunted house. Facing demolition, a local movement called “Save the Don” rescued it from destruction, and the hotel, like its namesake, escaped death. It began yet another life in 1973 as a resort, Thomas and Lucinda’s story only a memory.

Dramatic though it is, you’d never know any of it happened, save for a few history plaques on the walls downstairs. There’s no mention of the lovers, though I see evidence of other notable guests over the years, including Marilyn Monroe, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Tom Petty, Joe DiMaggio, Wayne Gretzky, and Jimmy Buffett, in addition to a timeline of its latest sprucings-up: a spa opened in 2008; a full renovation concluded around 2022. The only buzz I hear filling the halls is that earlier this year, Paul Rudd filmed here in a 1980s period drama-dark comedy called The Statement. Some even say the love story is a fabrication of a long-ago marketing department, though the details are confirmed by the current historian.

Me? I’m much more invested in the present: daiquiris under flamingo-pink umbrellas, a glittering ocean, and live music around an Art Deco-inspired bar that could be in the Great Gatsby. One thing I realize, regardless of the truth of any of it, is that I’m feeling… entertained. Not your average amenity at a hotel. And while I’m not a “ghost person,” I’m of the opinion that anyone living eternally in the minds of visitors is a spectre of some form, paranormal or not.

So whether you come to glimpse the ghosts of old Thomas Rowe, his lost love, and WWII soldiers, or just to soak up the sun with some of the best service on St. Pete Beach, you’ll certainly feel a legacy in these pink walls just like their story—enduring.

I lay my head down the night of my tour, absorbed with the history of the Don. I wait for a sound, any sound—faint scratches, soft crying—that would point to star-crossed lovers. But I drift to sleep hearing none. The only haunting is the stories that fill my subconscious, long after the lights go out.